Category Archives: Travel

A Raft instead of a Rope

Posted on by

Having abseiled down some waterfalls, I might as well raft over others now. Certainly nothing like the monstrous 80m+ high waterfalls I rappelled down, but at 7 meters, the Kaituna River hosts the largest commercially rafted waterfall in the world. And you actually have a series of waterfalls through the whole trip. Even though I’ve rafted twice, I’ve never done waterfalls or a Class 5 before. This trip would encompass both.

The first set of waterfalls are sort of the ‘trial’ before getting to the big one. They still are plenty intimidating once you get to them, both being a few meters high.

Over the first falls we went. After lining the raft up we pretty much just hold on. I’m in the front left spot of the boat.

Continue reading →

I Always Wanted to be a Hamster

Posted on by

Before Aura left to continue her journey southward, we had one final activity to try together. Zorbing.

While you can do ‘Zorbing’ in a great many places around the world now, New Zealand, and more specifically, Rotorua, was the birthplace. And if you don’t know what Zorbing is – picture a human in a giant hamster ball rolling down a hill. That’s pretty much exactly what it is. It’s as silly and as fun as it sounds.

Continue reading →

Pluses and minuses

Posted on by

After the first small taste of volcanic activity in Rotorua, the next day Aura and I headed 30 minutes south of the town to the Wai-O-Tapu geothermal reserve, which has numerous volcanic lakes and pools, and on top of that, an active geyser. This was obviously a tourist area once we got here. I felt like I was at Sea World waiting for the whale show.

Continue reading →

Rotorua walk

Posted on by

The interesting thing with Rotorua is that signs of volcanic activity are everywhere. Vapourous hot pools abound, with just a short (less than 5 minutes) walk takes you to several spots with water hot enough to need safety barriers.

First I started with Sulphur point, a place where numerous birds come to nest in the warm water area.

The seagulls were especially plentiful here. And protective of their area. Far less intimidating than magpies though.

Continue reading →

I visited a place and saw some stuff

Posted on by

Note: I had to sign a confidentiality agreement before I was allowed to go on this tour of an interesting piece of farm land that had been converted for a certain trilogy of films that shall remain nameless so I don’t show up on search engines and find lawyerly emails and phone calls awaiting me one day. Instead, I shall just make vague references and show you pictures instead. They just had a few clips on the news here showing the area in detail, so I don’t mind showing the pictures. I’ll respect the confidentiality agreement in keeping what I heard from general public ears/eyes though, since a lot of it relates to the ongoing filming and production. If you are really curious about certain aspects, feel free to email me.

Continue reading →

Return to the top

Posted on by

Tauranga’s one of my favourite spots in New Zealand so far. It’s just a lovely city, and Mt. Maunganui is just another highlight of the area. I hiked up to the top of it once again. The weather wasn’t quite as good, but there were still numerous people making the trek upwards, and the view from the top still very enjoyable after a sweaty hike up.

This time there was a bit more action at the top than before. With the sea-breezes coming off the bay and being driven straight up the sharp cliffs of Mt. Maunganui, this made a great spot for those wishing to fly.

Continue reading →

One of ‘those’ places

Posted on by

I almost don’t want to talk about this place. I spent 4 nights camping in McLaren Falls park, a 10 minute drive south of Tauranga on the Bay of Plenty. It felt like one of those ‘best kept secret’ kinds of places. It was absolutely wonderful.

For 3 of the 4 nights I was there, I had the place to myself. The entire park could camp well over 100 if it was busy, probably a couple hundred even. They give you picnic benches with free working BBQs nearby. Free hot showers. Wonderful scenery and bird life. Far off the highway so no sounds but nature. All for $5 per person per night. Which they are supposed to collect in the morning, but nobody ever came around to collect from me (probably not worth it with just one car in the park). I walked around the park and just enjoyed the scenery.

Continue reading →

And down we go

Posted on by

While I was in Costa Rica in April I gave what was called Canyoneering. It involved 2 abseils and two…sort of abseil, sort of ziplines. The 2 full abseils were short, the sort of ziplines were the larger ones. The would have been highlight of the activity was that all 4 activities were over waterfalls. Except it was so dry at the time that there was no water to be found on any of the falls. I was left underwhelmed by the experience.

When a chance to do Canyoning (the local term) here in New Zealand came up, I decided to give it another shot. I was very glad I did.

Early in the morning I was picked up in Thames by a van with 2 guides and 7 other adventurers, on our way to the spot I had just hiked the day prior – the Kauaeranga Valley and the Billy Goat Track.

We packed all of our gear into numerous waterproof sacks. Myself and one other guy got the worst of it – we carried the rope in our packs. Incredibly heavy stuff. The hike was grueling. 40 minutes uphill all the way, with only a short stop. The heavy weight didn’t make things either. But eventually we got to the top, donned our wetsuits and safety gear, and got a quick practice with abseiling. And then we were off. I went first.

Continue reading →